Connie Mack battles polls and public disinterest in quest to unseat Nelson

DESTIN --
If Republican Connie Mack IV is shouldering the burden of his
party’s control of the U.S. Senate, you wouldn’t know it last week as he
finished a six-day bus tour of 17 cities in north and central Florida.

In
26 stops, Mack drew modest crowds and meager media attention as he
crisscrossed the state. The steady drip of negative poll numbers had him
battling expectations as much as barbs from his challenger, incumbent
Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson. And with about four weeks before early voting
begins, the general public still seems ambivalent.

In
the Republican stronghold of Destin on Thursday, Mack greeted about 25
supporters outside the Donut Hole café on Highway 98, and then went
inside to introduce himself to customers.

“Could you get us menus?’’ one elderly couple asked Mack, 45, the
four-term congressman from Fort Myers, after he shook their hands. The
congressman obliged.

None of it has cracked Mack’s cool.

He
has tethered his fortunes, his message and his strategy to Republican
presidential candidate Mitt Romney and confidently tells audiences “if
Mitt Romney wins, I win. If I win, Mitt Romney wins.”

That’s a
hard hill to climb, according to the polls. In this must-win swing state
for Romney, the former Massachusetts governor remains locked in a
statistical tie with President Barack Obama. The latest Senate polls
show Mack trailing Nelson by between nine and 14 percentage points. Even
Mack’s own poll, a survey of 600 voters taken last Sunday, showed him
five percentage points down, with a margin of error of plus or minus
four percent. More here.